A person from Ghana has instructed the BBC how he was once seized at gunpoint by means of jihadists in neighbouring Burkina Faso, ahead of being taken to their giant wasteland camp the place he received a unprecedented perception into their lives – from the kids he believed have been skilled as suicide bombers, to the tunnels that they had dug to safe themselves and their armoured tanks from wind moves.

In his first media interview since his 2019 ordeal, the person – whom we’re calling James to give protection to his identification – stated his first month on the camp was once terrifying as a abundance collection of Islamist combatants returned from an operation, firing pictures within the wind.

“I thought that was the end. I was just sweating,” James stated, including that he additionally ended up wetting his pants when some combatants strike him with their weapons – and laughed.

James, who’s in his 30s and follows a standard African faith, stated the insurgents next tried to retain him, attractive him with the attract of energy by means of pronouncing he may just one month turn into the commander of a battalion.

“The commander brought out a sack. It contained different weapons, AK-47, M16, and G3 [rifles]. So he asked me which of them I could operate, and I said I had never operated one before. He said: ‘We have bigger weapons, so if I give you a battalion to handle, no-one can harm you’,” James added.

He stated he was once fortunate to be excused about two weeks next later he begged for his independence, claiming that he had a in poor health kid at house and promising the camp commander that he would turn into his recruiting-sergeant in Ghana – a guarantee he says he by no means saved.

Ghana’s Nationwide Fee on Civic Schooling, a central authority frame which is spearheading a folk marketing campaign to ban younger family from becoming a member of the jihadists, instructed the BBC that it was once conscious about James’ revel in.

“I met him in an attempt to sensitise tertiary-level students,” stated Mawuli Agbenu, the fee’s regional director within the capital, Accra.

“We will definitely have a way of engaging with him so that he will be an ambassador or an influencer within his community,” Mr Agbenu added.

Lengthy a strong independence, Ghana has to this point been immune the violence that has clear the insurgency unfold, inflicting havoc in Burkina Faso and its West African neighbours.

The insurgents who abducted James belonged to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), or The Assistance Crew for Islam and Muslims. An associate of al-Qaeda, it was once formally introduced in 2017 as an umbrella frame for diverse jihadist teams within the area.

In Burkina Faso, they’re most powerful within the north, the place they keep an eye on immense fields, however they have got additionally expanded to the south, alongside the porous 550km-long (340 mile) border with Ghana.

Greater than 15,000 family from Burkina Faso have fled into northern Ghana to departure the warfare, backup companies say.

Except for Burkina Faso, the jihadists have additionally received area in Niger and Mali, and feature performed assaults in Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo – all former French colonies – elevating fears that the insurgency was once spreading south against the coast.

In April, a senior UN reliable stated that “the epicentre of terrorism has shifted from the Middle East and North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated largely in the Sahel region [which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger]”.

Jihadists related to each al-Qaeda and the Islamic Order (IS) team function within the area.

A Ghanaian safety officer stationed alongside the border with Burkina Faso instructed the BBC that the jihadists regularly crossed over to regroup when below drive from Burkina Faso’s army – they usually additionally impaired the rustic to smuggle guns, meals and gas.

“It’s not safe for Ghana. They hide in towns like Pusiga. Residents of border communities are worried because there’s no tight security,” he added.

In a record excused in July, the Netherlands Institute of World Members of the family think-tank stated the “absence of real attacks on Ghanaian soil seems to result from JNIM’s calculus of not disturbing supply lines and places of rest as well as not provoking a relatively strong army”.

“Examples of people who are spared by JNIM by showing their Ghanaian identity cards fits this reading,” it added.

Maximum Ghanaians are Christians, however the family close the border with Burkina Faso is principally Muslim – and portions of the area have additionally been riven with ethnic tensions, elevating fears that the jihadists may just exploit them to their merit.

The think-tank stated that JNIM had tried in a “very small number” of circumstances to retain or incite Ghana’s little, in large part Muslim Fulani people to hold out assaults.

JNIM claimed that they have been marginalised, however its recruitment efforts had “minimal success” because the Fulani have been “aware of the chaos that has enveloped the Sahel due to familial networks” and didn’t need it to happen in Ghana, the think-tank added.

A Fulani Muslim preacher in Burkina Faso, Amadou Koufa, is the co-founder of JNIM and is its second-in-command. He recruits maximum of his combatants from the Fulani people in Burkina Faso.

The army has been accused by means of rights teams of retaliating by means of stigmatising Fulanis, and sporting out indiscriminate assaults on their villages in Burkina Faso.

In 2022, a France-based NGO, Promediation, stated its analysis confirmed that the jihadists had recruited between 200 and 300 younger Ghanaians.

Even though some have been working in insurgency-hit international locations like Burkina Faso, others were despatched again to their villages in northern Ghana to evangelise their “radical faith”, it added.

This may ultimately top to the jihadists gaining “a sustainable foothold in remote and peripheral areas in the north”, the NGO stated.

Since 2022, Ghana has been at the vanguard of efforts to manufacture a brandnew Western-backed, 10,000-strong regional power to struggle the Islamist insurgency.

Tamale – the most important town in northern Ghana – is meant to be the power’s headquarters.

On the other hand, the headquarters has now not but opened, and the destiny of the initiative is opaque later the area crack between pro-Western and pro-Russian states.

Burkina Faso – together with Mali and Niger – have pivoted against Russia. The 3 international locations have shaped their very own alliance to combat the insurgents, and feature additionally trusted support from Russian mercenaries.

Ghana and alternative regional states have remained allied with the West.

Ghana’s army has established bases within the north, however newly put in border surveillance apparatus was once now not but running, the protection officer, who spoke on status of anonymity, instructed the BBC.

On the other hand, extra troops were despatched since JNIM performed two assaults, past due closing pace and previous this pace, at the Burkina Faso facet of the border, the officer added.

Ghana’s executive didn’t reply to a BBC request for remark.

On the other hand, its ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila Adagbila, instructed the BBC the 2 international locations have been serving to each and every alternative to combat the insurgents, ultimatum that if Burkina Faso fails “Ghana may likely to be the next place”.

Ghana’s Nationwide Democratic Congress (NDC) celebration – which can method the then executive later successful elections on 7 December – promised in its marketing campaign manifesto to “enhance” border safety with “international partners”, in addition to enhance the rustic’s understanding features.

In August 2023, the Ecu Union introduced that as a part of a 20m euro ($21.6m; £16.6m) backup package deal it will provide Ghana with about 100 armoured cars, in addition to surveillance apparatus comparable to drones.

Many civilians and refugees move the Ghana-Burkina Faso border via footpaths and again roads to paintings, business or talk over with family members in spite of the protection possibility – and James stated he was once one in every of them. He was once travelling all of the technique to Senegal on his bike when he was once taken captive.

Upcoming driving for almost a month, he stated he encountered the insurgents in north-western Burkina Faso, as he was once nearing the border with Mali.

A handful of jihadists, additionally on motorbikes, forbidden him and took him to their camp the place he was once interrogated till their commander was once satisfied that he was once now not a undercover agent, James stated.

He added that his blindfold – the trademark dull jihadist flag – was once after got rid of.

James stated he discovered about 500 insurgents – most commonly younger males, together with one that known himself as a physician – residing within the camp.

Situated in desert-like ground, it was once made up of thatch-roofed huts, with little electricity-generating sun panels, he stated.

He added that the camp was once divided into 3 categories – for commanders and their households, lower-ranking jihadists and captured villagers and infantrymen.

James stated he was once detained within the endmost division, however were given “closer” to the jihadists in the second one future as he increasingly more acted as despite the fact that he had turn into a sympathiser in their motive.

They sat round in teams of 5 or 10, and listened to the songs of Salif Keïta, the Malian musician referred to as the Blonde Tonality of Africa, James stated.

Alternative jihadist teams have prohibited track, pronouncing it’s un-Islamic.

James stated that past the state on the camp was once most often comfortable, teams of jihadists steadily going to combat, firing celebratory pictures after they returned, claiming to have completed battlefield good fortune.

James stated he realised that this was once the gunfire he had heard at the first month, and were given impaired to it.

He added that the insurgents parked their tanks and pick-up vans in two inter-connected tunnels to safeguard they weren’t destroyed if there was once an wind clash, past just a few cars remained out of doors “on stand-by, for an emergency”.

He stated the jihadists additionally obvious their darkest aspects – telling him they captured ladies right through raids on villages and offered them to each and every alternative.

“They trade the women they’ve captured. Others sell wives that they are fed up with. Those who resist are gang-raped into submission by two or three fighters,” James added, despite the fact that he didn’t see them do that.

James stated the ladies on the camp integrated the other halves of jihadists who carried out home chores like cooking and cleansing, past those that have been captured have been both sex-slaves or have been pressured to turn into combatants.

He defined that he noticed absolutely veiled ladies, with AK-47 rifles mysterious below their garments, let go the camp to raid villages for cattle to feed family on the camp – or to promote at markets in close by cities.

James stated he additionally noticed dozens of youngsters, together with the ones of jihadists, being skilled within the virtue of guns and explosives.

“You’ll see a small kid holding a gun and telling you that if he goes to meet some people, this is how he is going to kill them,” James added.

He stated he two times noticed 4 youngsters being taken to some other location, ahead of going back on the camp with suicide vests.

They wore lengthy, drop outfits over them, and left the camp with begging bowls, James stated.

Jihadists instructed him that after they look forward to a difficult combat in a the city or army camp, they ship youngsters disguised as beggars who after deplete themselves up, so the combatants can input amid the chaos, James stated.

He added that 3 jihadists had instructed him that they “sacrifice their children as suicide bombers and they get paid after every mission”, despite the fact that they didn’t expose the volume.

He stated the jihadists attempted to indoctrinate him, preaching that “anything Western is evil” and appearing him propaganda movies each evening, together with one of the most US invasion of Iraq and the killing of Palestinians within the tide warfare with Israel.

In line with James, because the insurgency was once being waged in French-speaking international locations, all of the jihadists have been Francophone, however one spoke English with a Ghanaian pronunciation, and all the time saved his face coated in order that he may just now not see him.

In an indication that the jihadists have been additionally influenced by means of pan-Africanism, James stated a few of them invoked the names of revolutionaries like Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and instructed him that family must “rise up” in opposition to “bad leaders” and sovereign themselves from “bondage”.

James stated the jihadists additionally expressed the view that if Sankara and Nkrumah had “lived long”, after “the whole of Africa would have been a better place – nobody would have travelled from Africa to the West. People would have been travelling from the West to Africa”.

James, unemployed on the era, stated their rhetoric was once robust, and simplest “strength of heart” avoided him from becoming a member of their ranks.

On how precisely he was once captured, James stated that two Muslim pals have been travelling with him on the era, promising to introduce him to a Muslim religious chief in Senegal who may just pray for him and enhance his fortunes.

All 3 of them have been intercepted by means of the jihadists as they have been coming to the tip of the primary leg in their commute, he stated.

James added one in every of his pals was once shot lifeless as he tried to elude, past his alternative buddy was once focused on him to the camp.

James stated the commander didn’t drop his buddy, making him concern that he were pressured to tied the jihadists – or was once lifeless.

“The commander told me that: ‘I will let you go if you assure me you will get me more fighters’,” James stated.

He added that ahead of riding him to a bus rank and giving him the fare for the commute again house, the insurgents gave him a touch quantity to conserve in contact, however, James stated, he by no means did and altered his quantity.

In line with James, the jihadists additionally gave him charms, which supposedly had supernatural powers.

Once more, many alternative jihadists abjure the virtue of amulets, believing them to be opposite to the lessons of Islam.

James confirmed the BBC the amulets, which have been product of chicken feathers, animal skins and herbs, coated in leather-based and material.

They integrated one that the jihadists falsely instructed him introduced coverage from bullets.

James stated he by no means were given the influence that the insurgents sought after to destabilise Ghana, visual it because the “safest place” to cover when below drive from Burkina Faso’s army.

Their center of attention was once on waging an insurgency in international locations the place France and america “exists”, believing that those two international locations exploit Africa’s sources, to the detriment of its family, James stated. That is denied by means of each international locations.

Ghana-based safety analyst Adib Saani expressed fear in regards to the rising insurgency in West Africa, and stated he didn’t see an army strategy to it.

“We need to go beyond the militarised posture. We must address the socio-economic and geopolitical deficits that are creating the environment for terrorism to strive,” he instructed the BBC.

Ghana’s Nationwide Fee for Civic Schooling has been sporting out a folk consciousness marketing campaign dubbed “see something, say something” to inspire citizens within the north to record suspicious task.

The marketing campaign has additionally been prolonged to Accra, to teach younger family in regards to the risks of jihadism.

The fee’s Mr Agbanu instructed the BBC that the marketing campaign was once important as Ghanaians have been prone to recruitment.

“There’s a high rate of corruption, unequal development across the country, and huge youth unemployment,” he stated.

James, who’s now a subsistence farmer, stated that he was once simply relieved to be alive because the jihadist commander had instructed him that he was once making an exception by means of liberating him as a result of usually it was once “either your dead body that will go home or nobody will ever hear of you again”.